In the not-so-distant past, the Supreme Court hewed to precedent and generally rebuffed all but the most monumental constitutional questions. But ever since Earl Warren became Chief Justice in 1953, a new "activist" court has thrown open its judicial windows to practically every ill and issue of U.S. life. In the face of what it regards as legislative inaction, the "Warren court" has desegregated schools, revolutionized criminal justice, rewritten the U.S. political system by plunging into the thicket of legislative reapportionment. To expand the long reach of the Constitution, it has imposed almost all of the Bill of Rights on the states as well as the Federal Government for the first time in U.S. history.

Time and again, critics have blasted the Warren court for being more political than judicial; yet time and again, its controversial decisions have survived all efforts to override them by constitutional amendment. Not surprisingly, the nation's lawyers now figure that almost every case raises constitutional issues that may attract the court. They appeal more and more cases, and as a result, more and more decisions raise more and more issues. Over the years, the court's workload has risen steadily. In 1940 the court handled only 977 cases, in 1950 only 1,181. Last term it considered a total of 3,267 cases.